Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' : Explanation 6 / Reference to Context

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I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope...

These lines have been taken from Lord Tennyson’s elegiac poem 'In Memoriam'. To be more specific, we must mention that this excerpt is from Lyric 55 of the said poem.

The poet, after the untimely death of his intimate friend named Arthur Henry Hallam, became mentally devastated. In this regard, we need to say that he composed these lines in the remembrance of his deceased chum.

The speaker persona of the poem stretches out the "lame hands of faith", because whenever he tries to rationalise his doubts, he gains unsatisfactory consequences alone. All that he can do, in this perspective, is to "gather dust and chaff" only. He, therefore, submits himself to the Lord and he dimly trusts "the larger hope". This is his optimism and his faith in the Christian concept, which is solid and unshaken. The helpless and restless speaker gropes in darkness just for a little streak of line. He longs for a silver lining only.

This stanza is written in the rhyme scheme of ABBA that constitutes a quatrain. The expression "lame hands" is an instance of synecdoche, part for the whole, to be more specific. Here, the poet tries to reach the shore of faith. The commotion in the poet's within is very much palpable here.


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